Ever since the advent of Internet, people are dealing with excessive information flowing among people, through network, and by paper. The excesiveness requires news media to be a robust source of unbiased information as an organizer instead of being the primary source of it. However, the media is not thoroughly fulfilling the newly given requirement same as they have undoubtly failed with the prior function not only because they are not reliable, but also because they are biased.
Thanks to IT technology that have recently dragged them off their throne, today's news media share and reproduce each other's information source without any physical delay. To put it again, if one fails to report a piece of faulty information, the others automatically replicate the mistake. There are no mean to audit or filter this kind of error. The paper media is busy with publishing corrections by every single volume for the errors that usually exceed the expanse of correction column; the visual media expect audiences to be forgetful, cutting more budget on building robust information soruce for the sake of profitability.
Moreover, the media are usually managed by stakeholders who can never have unbiased view on any issue. The stakeholders must make decisions that would ultimately help themselves. In this sense, they have no incentive to stay unbiased when their incentive is not consistent with the norm. They distort, faud, fabricate, and demolish all pieces information by applying superficially plausible assumptions and faulty generalizations, cheating average people who do not usually have adequate quantative and analystic skills.
In brief, the news media today are no longer a realiable source of unbiased information because it is driven by stakeholds who have own incentives, which is usually different from those of our society and consumers, and because they no longer invest on strengthning their information source. Unless the media remind of their true obligations that come first. They will soon be obsolete. |